As today’s digital economy shifts toward the AI economy of tomorrow, artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize work and business. Over a few short years, AI will transform organizations, org charts, and roles. And the CIO position will not be exempt.
Indeed, some IT leaders are seeing changes already. And while some CIOs will see more change than others in their businesses, industries, and roles, what CIOs do and how they do it will inevitably change because of AI.
“You’re going to see modest change in some companies and in other companies you’ll see massive change, and it has to do with the pace at which they’re adopting AI. When AI gets adopted, that’s where you see a lot of change,” says Vijay Gurbaxani, director of the Center for Digital Transformation at the University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business.
Regardless of the pace of change, Gurbaxani and others say it’s clear the CIO role will continue to evolve. The CIO of the future will need to be more strategic, more technically astute, and more visionary than ever before. The CIO of the future will also face new responsibilities — atop all their existing ones. As a result, many will see their titles morph and their place in the org chart shift.
With all that expected to happen in the next few years, today’s CIOs and aspiring IT leaders should be developing their ability to make a big impact.
“This is a renaissance opportunity for CIOs,” says Kristen Lamoreaux, president and CEO of Lamoreaux Search. “They’re better prepared than any other function to have an impact on not just the business but the world.”
Changes under way, with more ahead
This shift is already beginning, as the CIO role — a position that has been in flux since its origins in the 1980s — continues to evolve.
According to CIO.com’s 2025 State of the CIO Survey, three-quarters of IT leaders are already collaborating closely with line-of-business (LOB) leaders on AI applications, with 71% also saying the IT department is driving AI adoption efforts with business units. Additionally, three quarters of surveyed IT leaders expect to become even more involved with AI and machine learning over the next year.
The survey further found that a growing percentage of CIOs are moving away from being functional leaders to being transformative and even strategic: While 41% consider themselves strategic today, 52% say they expect their roles to be strategic in the next three to five years.
Strategy, vision, and technical chops on the rise
Strategic work is familiar to many CIOs now, as a good percentage of IT leaders today work with their executive colleagues to reimage workflows and processes using technology, says Gordon Wong, senior partner and leader of the operations excellence practice at West Monroe, a digital services firm.
But Wong sees a different role on the horizon, with CIOs increasingly being seen as the visionary for the business. They’ll be expected to see around corners, envision novel approaches, and determine how to make them reality.
“They’ll be graded on their perspectives and how they’re keeping up with the market,” he adds.
Similarly, a greater percentage of CIOs in the upcoming years will be measured on whether and how well they meet customer needs and deliver positive business outcomes, Gordon says.
To succeed as CIO in 2028, Lamoreaux says CIOs will need to be true technologists, reversing a school of thought that in recent years promoted the idea that a tech background wasn’t essential for IT leaders.
“The pendulum is swinging back to the need for greater technology skills,” as CIOs must understand AI, quantum computing, and any new technologies thoroughly enough to harness their potential to reimagine what their organizations offer and how work gets done, Lamoreaux says. “They have to be able to bring the capabilities and possibilities of the technology to life,” she explains.
Lamoreaux also expects CIOs in 2028 to retain full responsibility for IT infrastructure, along with its cost and reliability — which, of course, has been core to the role from its start. However, she says the task will be more complex in upcoming years as CIOs will have to ensure they have the right infrastructure to support ever-expanding AI capabilities and the energy to power them. “They will have to understand the ecosystem — the tech, the power, the environmental impact,” she says.
CIOs of 2028 will retain responsibility for cybersecurity, too, Lamoreaux says, although that work will likewise become more complex than it is today as hackers master AI to orchestrate attacks and quantum to unlock encrypted data stores.
CIOs weigh in on the future of the role
CIOs themselves see similar trends.
“By 2028 the CIO will be less of a back-office technologist and more of a business model architect,” says Shamin Mohammad, executive vice president and chief information and technology officer at CarMax. “The role will be defined by three imperatives: driving growth through digital innovation, orchestrating enterprise agility, and embedding AI into the fabric of every function.”
Mohammad notes that the CIO will need “strong talent and teams working across the organization and … working in lockstep/partnership with other senior leaders to bring company strategy to reality.”
Additionally, “the CIO of 2028 will be expected to lead with a product mindset, build platforms that scale, and cultivate a culture of continuous reinvention.”
Indeed, reinvention will be a key piece of the CIO job in upcoming years, says Lou DiLorenzo Jr., principal and national US CIO program leader as well as AI and data strategy practice leader at Deloitte Consulting.
AI will require organizations to reimagine all their processes, workflows, and opportunities, not merely optimize or reengineer them, he explains.
“This new capability has proven that we can reimagine how and where and by whom work gets done. And it’s the CIO role that has to have the conversation about that; CIOs are best positioned to be the catalyst for that conversation,” he adds.
To do that, CIOs must know more than how the company makes money, he says; they must know where the bulk of work happens, envision how AI — whether classic AI, generative AI, or agentic AI — can remake that work, focus or even redefine the outcome, and get people excited about it, DiLorenzo says.
“They need to know who does the work and how do they do it today and how do we reimagine it for distinctly different results tomorrow,” he says.
Craig A. Cuyar, senior vice president and global CIO of Omnicom Group, who sees the CIO of 2028 as “a broad business strategic role responsible for revenue drivers,” expects the future CIO will have more work around governance and ethics, as increasing AI use creates new opportunities and challenges.
Cuyar also sees the CIO having to “inculcate a culture of AI in the organization,” understand the implications of its use, and ensure its use meets regulatory requirements around the world — making it necessary for CIOs to have a geopolitical global awareness.
Furthermore, the CIO of 2028 will be a leader in using AI to transform IT operations and how they themselves do their jobs, says Alberto Silveira, who as CTO at Hirevue has responsibility for IT. He believes this will give CIOs more time in their schedules for strategic work, as AI will handle tactical tasks, such as managing the budget, creating forecasts, and drafting business cases.
Mieko Shibata, CIO of R&T Deposit Solutions, has a similar take on the future of the role.
“While foundational responsibilities like IT operations, regulatory compliance, and vendor oversight will remain essential, CIOs will be expected to take on broader responsibilities around enterprise transformation, strategic product development, and revenue enablement,” Shibata says.
Shibata sees the CIO role evolving into a cross-functional leadership position that “not only supports but actively drives business growth, innovation, and productivity. To do this effectively, CIOs will need to be deeply aligned with their organization’s strategic direction and have strong business acumen in addition to technical expertise,” she says.
To do that, she adds, “CIOs will need to be fluent in data and AI, lead cultural and organizational transformation, and focus on revenue and customer impact.”
All this, she notes, “will demand new capabilities and influence that go well beyond the traditional IT remit.”
CIO capabilities, competencies shift toward transformational leadership
Shibata believes CIOs will need strong business fluency, commercial acumen, and the ability to translate technology investments into business value to succeed in 2028. She expects “leadership, communication, and collaboration skills will be more critical than ever.”
“CIOs must also be transformational leaders — able to unite teams around a shared vision and foster innovation across generations and cultures. A data-first mindset, especially in leveraging AI/ML for operational and commercial opportunities, will be essential,” she adds.
Meanwhile, Shibata anticipates that “some hands-on technical skills may become less central at the executive level, particularly as CIOs delegate operational detail to CTOs or architects. However, an understanding of emerging technologies and their business application will still be critical. The shift will be less about losing skills and more about expanding into strategic and leadership domains.”
Others expect the evolution of the CIO role will impact the org chart and the CIO’s place in it — although there’s not a consensus on how.
Shibata, for example, thinks that, as CIOs become more strategic, there will be a greater need for strong second-line leaders such as CTOs, chief architects, or IT risk heads to ensure operational excellence.
Michael Goldberg, vice president of strategic partnerships at Harvey Nash, a recruitment and IT outsourcing firm, makes similar observations, saying “as the CIO role becomes more focused on strategy and business impact, there’s going to be a need for new roles underneath to handle the more technical, day-to-day responsibilities. I don’t think the CIO title goes away, but you’ll probably see more companies add roles like chief AI officer or someone focused on transformation to support that shift.”
Meanwhile, West Monroe’s Wong predicts that the CIO’s and COO’s responsibilities will become increasingly blurred, with both being responsible for ensuring the business operates as efficiently as possible. Some believe the two roles could merge.
Others see the CIO role — and title — adapting as its responsibilities expand, with more CIOs becoming chief information and digital officers or chief information and technology officers or chief information and AI officers.
Shibata favors chief innovation officer, saying it “is already a more accurate reflection of what many CIOs do.”
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Source: News